{"id":29973,"date":"2012-05-14T11:05:05","date_gmt":"2012-05-14T15:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=29973"},"modified":"2012-05-14T11:05:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T15:05:14","slug":"lorinc-where-the-ttc-and-metrolinx-can-work-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2012\/05\/14\/lorinc-where-the-ttc-and-metrolinx-can-work-together\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Where the TTC and Metrolinx can work together"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In\u00a0 Saturday\u2019s Globe and Mail, I wrote about a Markham councillor \u2013 a conservative, no less \u2013 who has a radically sensible notion: That Metrolinx and the Toronto Transit Commission should actually work together<\/a> to create an integrated transit network. Imagine that: cooperation in the public sector. What a concept!<\/p>\n

In particular, Jim Jones has been talking up a plan to twin the tracks on the GO rail corridors, buy electric trains, and develop a two-tier express\/local commuter rail service linked to the TTC\u2019s east-west lines. Building on the anti-diesel movement in the west end, Jones\u2019 scheme not only delivers rapid transit to Scarborough, it also opens up a space to re-cast the debate about the downtown relief line, which, to date, focuses mainly on another subway line.<\/p>\n

But before Jones\u2019 untested idea can receive any kind of serious technical and financial scrutiny, the province and the city need to make a concerted effort to coordinate the way Metrolinx and the TTC carry out their long-ranging planning.<\/p>\n

The lack of interoperability between GO and the TTC is an old and much commented-upon phenomena rooted in jurisdictional rivalries and the physical constraints of the city\u2019s rail infrastructure. The consequences are writ large on our geography: with a few exceptions \u2013 Union Station, Yorkdale, Finch, etc. \u2013 the GO network doesn\u2019t connect to the TTC, and the city, for its part, turns its back on the GO stops (e.g., Oriole Station, hidden cleverly under the 401, off Leslie).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The new LRT lines, coupled with Metrolinx\u2019s proviso that the TTC roll out the Presto card across its entire network, begins to break down the pointless psycho-political wall separating the two agencies. The question now is, what else can be done to further reinforce and build on these connections, with the goal of leveraging the opportunities that arise by combining two crucial transportation networks.<\/p>\n

Seems to me we\u2019ve arrived at an especially fortuitous moment to be thinking creatively about far-sighted solutions that don\u2019t involve uploading the TTC.<\/p>\n

With Metrolinx preparing its long-awaited investment strategy, John Tory is brewing up an advocacy campaign to encourage the McGuinty Liberals to get off their asses and implement the revenue tools needed to fund transit expansion. Metrolinx, moreover, is cooking up Big Move 2.0, a mandated refinement of the agency\u2019s long-range plan. The TTC, in turn, is scrambling to solve the worsening subway crowding crisis. And Waterfront Toronto is trying to figure out how to deliver transit to the soon-to-be-populated West Donlands and East Bayfront.<\/p>\n

A good first step: quickly move to improve the linkages at the governance level. Why isn\u2019t TTC chief general manager Andy Byford, for example, an ex-officio member of the Metrolinx board? And given the imminent citizen appointments to the TTC, why shouldn\u2019t Metrolinx have a guaranteed seat on the Commission?<\/p>\n

Right now, the lines of communication between the two are hopelessly circuitous, as the March transit war proved. There\u2019s no reason why the two agencies shouldn\u2019t have some kind of institutionalized connection at the governance level. That\u2019s how it works with Waterfront Toronto. Why not with transit?<\/p>\n

It also seems logical that the GTA\u2019s major transportation agencies (GO\/Metrolinx, TTC, Mississauga Transit, York Region Transit, etc.) establish some kind of permanent secretariat so senior officials have a forum where they can regularly meet and address future planning issues related to the integration of their respective networks.<\/p>\n

Transit officials do talk to one another already about operational matters. But if Metrolinx and the province succeed in gaining support for new revenue tools, those communication channels and venues for joint planning will need to become much stronger.<\/p>\n

The same thing should happen with land use planning. Metrolinx, to its credit, is actively developing \u201cmobility hub\u201d strategy<\/a> to intensify around some of the GO stations. The goal: create mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly nodes on lands now dominated by asphalt parking lots.<\/p>\n

Many of these are in the 905, obviously, but Metrolinx is working on a couple of potential City of Toronto locations, including Weston and Bloor\/Dundas West, both planned stops for the Air-Rail Link on the Georgetown South corridor. Metrolinx and the City have been refining a\u00a0 planning vision for Dundas-West [PDF]<\/a> for about two years. A key detail: digging a short pedestrian tunnel linking the eastern end of the Dundas West subway station and the GO platforms, currently accessible by a pair of glorified drain-pipes under a rusty rail overpass.<\/p>\n

That planning process, long-overdue, is evidence of increased institutional cooperation, although the money decisions \u2014 who\u2019s going to pay for that tunnel? \u2014 have yet to be worked out. Less clear, however, is whether the TTC and Metrolinx, the city\u2019s planners, and other agencies (e.g., Infrastructure Ontario) are putting their heads together to find other locations and opportunities to create those kinds of connections. The Waterfront seems like one obvious venue, but there are others.<\/p>\n

Markham\u2019s Jim Jones, taking the long view, correctly believes there\u2019s an opportunity to intensify at the proposed local Scarborough stops along his I-METRO-E, each of which intersect with TTC routes and east-west arterials.<\/p>\n

Or consider the west end, and #stclairdisaster specifically \u2014 intersected, as it is, by two GO rail corridors (Barrie and Georgetown) at Caledonia and Keele. At council last week, a staff report estimated that it could cost at least $30 million, but probably more, to widen the underpass just west of Old Weston Road.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a huge sum. But if we\u2019re going to go to the trouble and expense of re-building that bridge to fix a traffic problem, surely we should thinking about how to leverage that outlay to link the streetcar and the GO service that passes above.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s all very long-range stuff. But if and when Metrolinx\u2019s investment strategy receives political assent, the possibility of establishing such linkages is no longer abstract and impossibly remote. Yet all that potential depends on the province and the city demolishing the silos that have long separated GO and the TTC and replacing them with a formal kind of partnership arrangement, such as the one that characterizes the relationship between Waterfront Toronto and the city.<\/p>\n

With tens of billions of dollars and the GTA\u2019s congestion crisis at stake, the region simply can\u2019t afford to have these two systems traveling on separate tracks.<\/p>\n

photo by Sean Marshall<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0 Saturday\u2019s Globe and Mail, I wrote about a Markham councillor \u2013 a conservative, no less \u2013 who has a radically sensible notion: That Metrolinx and the Toronto Transit Commission should actually work together to create an integrated transit network. Imagine that: cooperation in the public sector. What a concept! 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